Winning Poems for December 2015

First Place

In the photograph my father’s fingers sink
into the fur on my mother’s jacket. It’s 1942
and he stands in his sailor’s uniform, complete
with hat, at what might be taken for parade rest,
one arm neatly tucked behind his back, except
for the fact that his other arm holds my mother
tight, as if to steady her, to steady them both.
She smiles fiercely, leans close, clutching
her purse, her eyes slits against the bright
autumn sun, against the newness of marriage,
against a war that seems like it will never be
done. They’re not alone. A shadow thrown
to the right might be someone drinking
from a can or cup, and bottom left the anonymous
photographer, now long gone, awkward bones most
likely buried in some bowl of earth. My parent’s own
shadows truncated, falling off the curb onto the road,
already moving with the sun into the unknown.
Above them, a streetlight globe like a blessing,
across the street a brick archway, apartment entrance,
what might be two children, standing alone.

Emotionally complex and powerful. The tension and contingency are created through the tightly woven form, echoing sound patterns, off-rhymes and sharp concrete language. Lines are arranged to heighten the contrast and irony inherent in the themes of love and war. Enjambed lines propel the relentless future forward and create a sense of urgency and loss. The final turn offers a degree of hope and stability juxtaposed against the innocence and helplessness of the image of the couple as children. This arresting poem resonates on so many levels. --Barbara Siegel Carlson

Second Place

Yesterday l pressed open the wings of a starling
and found amongst the hem of its feathers the loosest notes

of my history, shadow torn as if tattered by the wind.
Webs spooled over hedgerows. My grandmother’s coat

buttoned against the wind as l gathered pine cones, armfuls
of fern. A flight of sparrows following a path of light

through the thicket as the days shuffled, rearranged themselves,
and the metallic tang of moss and bark struck almost like a match

across the tongue, but not quite, because loss is like that,
incomplete, legs itching to move but with nowhere to go.

School shoes closed like caves for the body to fall into.
Because isn’t memory a coalescence of only a fist

full of moments like a glass of water at my grandfather’s bed
that moved against the arc of the sun then shattered;

the flowers inside his chest breaking
one by one as he coughed over their blossoms.

And the wind shaken by the branches outside
riding up over the lane like the crest of a wave to bury

us to our knees because isn’t the act of loss more like a gravity
that can take you over. The heart of a starling burning

through your chest.

Such startling, evocative imagery. The poem develops in a surreal manner revealing its truth about the nature of memory and sense of loss in a way that is both haunting and moving. --Barbara Siegel Carlson

Fresh, sensual language brings out a sharpened and deepened view of the natural world through the un-curtained window. The arc goes from inside to out as well as from physical to divine further sensitizing us to the world’s beauty and pain that is its reality. --Barbara Siegel Carlson

Through its haiku-like lyrics and unanswerable, compelling questions the subjects asks, this poem addresses themes of homelessness and the plight of refugees, as well as mortality in a penetrating and paradoxical manner. --Barbara Siegel Carlson